WARD, Margaret 1950-

PERSONAL: Born August 4, 1950, in Iserlohn, Germany; daughter of William (a British army officer) and Grace (a nurse; maiden name, O'Reilly) Ward; companion of Paddy Hillyard (a university lecturer); children: Fintan, Medbh. Ethnicity: "Irish." Education: Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, B.A., 1973. Politics: Northern Ireland Women's Coalition; "socialist-feminist."

ADDRESSES: Office—Democratic Dialogue, 23 University St., Belfast BT7 1FY, Northern Ireland; fax: 028-9022-0050. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, junior research fellow at Institute of Irish Studies, 1979-81; Belfast City Council, Belfast, women's development officer in Department of Community Services, 1984-86; University of the West of England, Bristol, part-time lecturer, 1991-93; Bath Spa University College, Bath, England, research fellow in history, 1993-99; Democratic Dialogue, Belfast, assistant director, 2000—. Queen's University, member of advisory committee, Centre for the Advancement of Women in Politics.

MEMBER: British Association of Irish Studies (vice chair, 1996-99), Irish Women's Network.

WRITINGS:

Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism, Pluto Press (London, England), 1983, reprinted with new introduction, 1995.

Maud Gonne: A Life, Pandora Press (London, England), 1990.

(Editor) In Their Own Voice: Women and Irish Nationalism, Attic Press (Dublin, Ireland), 1995.

Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington: A Life, International Specialized Book Services (Portland, OR), 1997.

The Northern Ireland Assembly and Women: Assessing the Gender Deficit, Democratic Dialogue (Belfast, Northern Ireland), 2000.

(Editor, with Louise Ryan) Soldiers, New Women, and Wicked Hags: Women and Irish Nationalism, Irish Academic Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2003.

Contributor to books, including Contesting Politics: Women in Ireland, North and South, edited by Yvonne Galligan, Eilis Ward, and Rick Wilford, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1999; Gendered Nations: Europe and Beyond, edited by Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann, and Catherine Hall, Berg Publishers (New York, NY), 2000; Female Activists: Irish Women and Change, 1900-1960, edited by Mary Cullen and Maria Luddy, Woodfield Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2001; The Irish Revolution, 1913-1923, edited by Joost Augusteijn, Palgrave (Basingstoke, Hampshire, England), 2002; and Motherhood in Ireland, edited by Patricia Kennedy, Mercier Press (Dublin, Ireland), 2003. Contributor to journals, including Women's History Review, Race and Class, Feminist Review, Journal of Gender Studies, Honest Ulsterman, Hecate, and History Ireland. Member of editorial advisory board, Irish Studies Review and Saothar.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Anna Parnell: A Biography, publication by Cork University Press (Dublin, Ireland) expected in 2005.

SIDELIGHTS: Margaret Ward once told CA: "I grew up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and from 1968 was active in the movement for civil rights. I later became a founding member of a number of feminist groups in Belfast and, as a graduate student in the department of political science at Queen's University, I became interested in researching the history of women's involvement in Irish political movements. One fundamental issue was understanding why articulate and politically active women were excluded from the public sphere when the Irish Free State was formed in 1922. My research helped the feminist groups to which I belonged develop a critique of contemporary Irish society. Due to political differences with my thesis supervisor, I did not submit my dissertation. It was published as Unmanageable Revolutionaries: Women and Irish Nationalism, a book that has been influential in many different circles.

"Since then I have focused upon suffrage and other feminist issues in further exploration of the relevance of feminism to modern Ireland. Biographical studies have provided an accessible means of putting this research into context. I have analyzed nationalist involvement in my biography of Maud Gonne, and my study of Hanna Sheehy-Skeffington, a suffragist and Sinn Feiner, examines the relationship between these political commitments."

Ward recently added: "I returned to Belfast in 1999. In my post as assistant director of the independent think-tank Democratic Dialogue, I have been engaged in research on the position of women in public life in Northern Ireland and, in particular, on the role played by women in the Northern Ireland Assembly. While I have continued my writing as a historian, the majority of my work is now on contemporary issues. One focus has been the difficulties of bringing up children in societies in conflict. How do mothers explain the origins of inter-communal strife to their children? How do they keep children safe? Are they responsible (unwittingly) for the transmission of sectarian attitudes?

"As an activist in the political party the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, I have been responsible for coordinating party policy and writing our election manifesto for the Assembly elections of 2003."